Governable Spacemakers Fellowship: Presenting the Small Hassles Court Minigame
Metagov fellows build a space for exploring how self-governance online can be frame as conflict mediation
Metagov is pleased to announce the completion of our inaugural Governable Spacemakers Fellowship! Over the past eight months, our team of three fellows — Jenny Liu Zhang (Digital Artist), Amanda Nicole Curtis (Speculative Digital Ethnographer), and Joanna Rivera-Carlisle (Digital Governance Engineer) — have developed the “Small Hassles Court” minigame, a space for exploring how self-governance online can be frame as conflict mediation.
What is Small Hassles Court?
Small Hassles Court is a conflict resolution space where players can address minor interpersonal issues with friends or partners in a playful environment. Located in Viewfinder Valley, part of Twisterland — an online game world designed by Plot Twisters that fosters self-reflection and emotional literacy — this space welcomes discussions about miscommunications, hurt feelings, and other “small hassles” that often go unaddressed.
The project explores what the fellows posit as the smallest, most fragile, and vital scale of self-governance: emotional co-regulation. Unlike traditional courts, Small Hassles Court has no judge or jury — how players negotiate their conflict lies entirely with them. The Small Hassles Court was designed not to adjudicate, but to attune. It is a tool for micro-governance, a space to rehearse fairness, tend to emotional needs, and to play together.
Project Documentation
Visit the documentation page on Metagov’s website to explore the complete fellowship outputs:
Play Small Hassles Court — Interact with the open-sourced digital game and experience emotional governance firsthand
Watch the Seminar Presentation — View the team’s Metagov seminar where they discuss their process and findings
Read the Speculative Ethnography — Dive into “The Court is Adjourned (For Now),” a report that traces both what was built and how it felt to build it, moving between analytical design decisions and imagined futures
The Small Hassles Court subverts the paradigmatic idea of a courtroom as institution-upholding and carceral: instead, it is an ironic and playful environment that serves the shared culture between claimants, where the “laws of the land” are mutually discussed and decided rather than imposed by an institutional power system. Through this project, the team aims to model how to navigate emotional and social needs as a form of healthy self-governance from the bottom up using digital means.
As Governable Spacemakers, the team has framed conflict mediation as a self-governance exercise that prioritizes fairness, respect, and collaboration by design. In a time when online interactions often take advantage of manipulative heuristics, digital experiences like Small Hassles Court help users get to know themselves and others better in mutually respectful ways. Conflicts—even the smallest hassles—can teach us a lot about our values, and how nurturing them are social endeavors that never exist in a vacuum.
Explore the Project
Visit the documentation page on Metagov’s website to interact with Small Hassles Court, watch the seminar presentation, and read the full speculative ethnography report.
Acknowledgements
Technical Support: Kyle Thompson and Annie Litherland
Trailer Music: Jake Conder
Fellowship Coordinator: Cent Hosten
Fellowship Research Director: Nathan Schneider
Special thanks to the Metagov and Plot Twisters communities who participated in playtesting.
The Governable Spacemakers Fellowship is a Metagov project with grant support from the Center for Cultural Innovation - AmbitioUS and the Henry Luce Foundation.